Posted
by
CowboyNeal
on Saturday June 18, 2005 @11:55AM
from the can't-get-there-from-here dept.

GregBryant writes "They haven't blogged it yet, but maps.google.com has added some additional scaling-out, and maps of the entire world are available. Only country names so far (except in the US, Canada & UK) but it's still nice to finally click back & forth between the Satellite imagery and some real maps, even if their proportions don't quite match."

Getting satellite views of physiographic features from a readily available source is truly one of the best things to come from the internet. The only downside to the Google satellite images is that the highest resolution images cover metropolitian areas. This is great for folks who use it for urban planning, environmental impact assessments, historic studies, etc., it doesn't do much for geologists or geographers. Still, it is free.....

As a geologist it is nice to have aerial tools on line, especially when some of the other taxpayer funded sources of data have been taken offline by private companies. While I don't object to paying for data produced by private companies, I get a bit steamed with the idea that I have to pay *twice* for government-generated data. I understand the necessity to save the taxpayers money, but in the case of topographic, DEM, and DLG sources generated by the government, we have already paid for most of the cost of production; hosting is a fraction of cost for agencies such as the USGS.

Even if hosting were a significant cost, paid advertising could cover the cost and provide a good income for any company interested in providing the service for the government. The fees that some of these charge for taxpayer-subsidized data is rediculous.

You're guessing? Without having any clue what "plain doesn't work" means (thanks for the technical language), and not working for Google, I have to wonder if you've turned Javascript off in your options. Or one of your extensions has.

...judging from all the child posts below yours. I refer to dragging the zoom bar up or down without releasing the mouse button.

Does the map zoom in/out as you move the mouse in Firefox? If so, then I hang my head down in shame, as an utter liar. In IE, the whole map gets all pixelly; once you release the mouse button, it returns to a normal, smooth image (a set of them actually, but I digress).

If you are a geologist urban planner, or historian, why can't you buy satellite imagery? You'd get well-specified data, and not just some pictures from an unknown source. The cost of the data should be inconsequential if you have any kind of a budget. Having to pay twice for data from tax-funded sources is outrageous, but it doesn't make your life harder.

What I'm trying to say, professionals might have a use for this, but it shouldn't benefit them that much. On the other hand, if you are about to go hi

No. I spend much time designing electronics and software. I don't go bonkers every time a surplus electronics shop opens next door. I can't use surplus stuff for real work. Google maps doesn't seem to have been meant as a source of data for professionals - which is why it's so amusing that Google maps are so interesting to you - I'd thought you had your own, better, sources!

Or is that not enough?I know they're not overly professional, but it's still not bad for something free to the public available through an internet browser.

While those are some great and informative links, they are useless for actual geologic applications. The grandparent poster isn't talking about the pretty aerial photograph (orthoimagery) you see available in programs such as World Wind [google.com] and the Natio [usgs.gov]

That's the raw data files, buddy. Can't really ask for much more than that can ya. BTW, if you check out the NASA worldwind project you will find that there is an incredible amount of freely availble GIS data being served up on wms servers all over the world.

I used maps.google.com during a recent home-buying experience, and it was very useful. It's easier to see the different residential and industrial areas for neighborhoods one is not familiar with. It's also pretty easy to spot apartment complexes, parks, golf courses, and how close a home is to a highway.

One can also compare lot sizes to get an idea of residential density, the number of homes with pools (I live in Phoenix, so pools are very common). Being able to switch easily between maps and images makes it easy to determine what that big parking lot is a part of, such as a mall or a mental health facility. Fortunately, the images for Phoenix appear to be less than a year or two old.

Some people may prefer to live next to a mental health facility, some may prefer the mall. All this info makes it easier to informed decisions about whether or not you want to live someplace before making the decision so schedule a home visit. Granted, it didn't always work out, I remember driving up to one place and telling the realtor to keep driving.

It also appears that for North America (maybe about as far south as Costa Rica) you can zoom in down to the 4th to last zoom level...it gets kind of pixelly, but from a geographer point of view, its neat to be able to pick out distinct urban and country areas in remote places like southern Mexico and Guatamala

The only downside to the Google satellite images is that the highest resolution images cover metropolitian areas.

Actually, it seems much weirder than that. Looking at my home state of Michigan, there are super-high-resolution bits out in the middle of nowhere. Someone decided they needed high-res photos of lovely fields and a bit of expressway. Usualy, I can't find any significant features, political or geographical, to justify it. Makes me want to put on a tinfoil hat sometimes...:)

If I zoom in to a certain magnification, the labels of Belgium and the Netherlands are switched.. if I zoom further in, it's correct.. I do wonder what plans google has with their expansion to europe..

Japan isn't there yet, apparently... Here's tokyo [google.com]... zooming in one more level on sattellite-view or two more levels on map-view results in blank data. ("we're sorry, but we don't have imagery at this zoom level for this region"). I think this has always been true of japan on google maps. So... has anything really changed?

Oh, I was hoping this would mean that the best-in-class road maps would finally go south of the US border. I've ALREADY been able to see the Mexico satellite photos -- granted I had to drag along the highway to get where I wanted: Hermosillo and San Carlos, but they've already been there.

So they botched the projection and that became noticeable once you got as far north as Anchorage. I know that's a pain in the butt for you Alaskans, but somehow I find it kind of cool anyway. I've made a lot of bugs in my career, but I've never managed to let the curvature of the earth screw something up.

I tell junior programmers that the reason I can fix problems faster than they can is that I've already made every mistake they can possibly make.

I know. It also means that google is well aware of map24 can do. Since that is something that they want to do themselves and they happen to have a lot of money... See where I'm going?
Of course it's all speculation, but if I had any shares in map24, I know I'd be quite excited right now.

I don't know, really... According to map24, there seems to be a "colony" (Novo-Pargolovskaja Kolonija - prison?) almost right under my window. There is an unfinished shopping mall there, but I don't see a prison.:)

A lot of big cities are already gathering images and info (including satellite imagery) and making them available. Portland, OR (big?) has Portland Maps [portlandmaps.com]. Not as slick as Google, but it sure would be neat if google listed links to other map/info sources for a region you're looking at on their map. I think listing relevant links is something they can handle. Paris Metro? Utah Topo? Disneyland bathrooms?

After heavy pressure from Israeli lobbyists, the US Congress enacted "shutter control" [cdi.org] specifically for Israel in 1997. Satellites using US technology aren't permitted to image Israel with a resolution of greater than 2 meters per pixel. That's why the images of Israel are so lousy.

There are several known "political holes" in the Keyhole/Google database. Israel is one. The US has insisted on blanking out the details of the White House roof, and for some wierd reason, the entire U.S. Capitol is pixilated. The Baghdad imagery is high-res, but pre-war, despite the copyright date on that section. A big area just east of the Baghdad airport seems to have been dimmed out recently.

But you can look at the former USSR in considerable detail. Check out the Kremlin, where you can see cars

Classic. Equating criticism of Israel. the state, with white supremacy and anti-semitisim. Fuck you. The OP wasn't even criticising, just stating facts, yet you have to pull out that tired, old, card. Maybe the Jewish conspiracy theories would die if we could have an honest disscusion about Israeli politics, without screaming "Nazi!" and hiding behind accusations of racism.

For an overview of the lobbying effort, see "MILITARY IMPLICATIONS OF COMMERCIAL HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGING SATELLITES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE" [isanet.org], by Lt. Col.
Peter L. Hays, USAF. He writes
"Then, in June 1996 the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel was lobbying the White House to restrict all U.S. commercial remote sensing of their territory to resolutions of no better than three meters." The cite is "Israel Asks White House to Place Curbs on 3 U.S. Satellite-Surveillance Firms," Wall Street Journal, 17 Jun 1996.

Google may be full of very smart people but they still can't geliminate the Mercator projection distortion (although this is an aesthetic gripe)
Google Maps is a clever web app that gets around many of the limitations of the browser, but I'd like to see a rich client, something like the 3D virtual globe Earth from Snow Crash perhaps? It doesn't have to be real time but it'd rock if it was - even if it was time delayed. I'd pay USD$5 a month for that, mainly for the eye candy. Anyone else interested?

Certain areas are blacked out on the satellite view, quite a bit less creative than the fuzzing an overlaying of the roof images in the instances you give. Anyone in the area would know what the blacked out images were- and all it'd take would be someone physically going there to find out if they weren't a local.

You might as well put a sign on the damn imagery: "Terrorists strike HERE!"

I wish they'd at least be creative like stitching in surrounding countryside or somesuch so it's not so obvious that th

Nothing like fuzzing out a public landmark that is so photographed that I could reconstruct an accurate-to-sub-meter 3d model just from publically available photos on the net.
Like This One [nara.gov].

It is interesting how they dealt with certain political issues. Kashmir is a bunch of dashed lines. Israel, too. Taiwan is labelled as such. The only thing that really throws me is Hong Kong. I thought that was officially part of China for the last 5 years.. I can't figure out what is going on with cyrus and the many lines through it. Anyone know what's up with that?

Looking at the satelite maps of the ocean it looks like you can see the contour of the ocean floor.
Is this from the satelite photos or is this generated artificially?
It looks like the resolution of the ocean photos are lower than the land mass areas.

They still don't show exit numbers on freeway exits, which would be really useful. Of course, a scale would be really helpful too, so I know how long a mile or km is supposed to be at a given zoom level and map distortion.

I've been working on a full-earth terrain renderer for the last year, similar in style to Keyhole or Worldwind. The addition of worldwide outlines on google is wonderful, because yesterday afternoon I finally started to add a google maps data source to my application. Until now, it limited to WMS servers such as http://onearth.jpl.nasa.gov./ [jpl.nasa.gov]

It's not nearly complete yet, because I still haven't properly handled the projection google uses (so the image is off near the poles), and it breaks at high detail levels, but these should be easily fixed within the next couple days. It should easily scale to the best data Google offers in the future.

There is one screenshot at the bottom of the page. The quality is fairly low, but that's because it's being rendered on a 5 year old laptop (I'm currently away from home).

Well, after seeing this news, I looked to see if Google has fixed a bug of mine yet*, and they have not done so yet, *but* the big thing that I immediately noticed was the addition of directional arrows for one-way streets. I then proceeded to take a glance at 10021 to see how that showed up, and was pleased.:)

*I noticed and reported a missing DLR station on their map of England - it's still not there, despite the nice directional arrows on/Station Road/.

I use Firefox and Comcast broadband. Every time I go to Google Maps to view a map, the map sections come in rapidly except the last section or two, which never come(s) in! This isn't a matter of the sections not existing. It happens with virtually every map I pull up. And I can sit there and hit the Refresh button on my browser and often a different section or sections will be the ones to not come in.

If you interested, I've tried to make a full list of changes [andrewhitchcock.org] on my website. That website has side by side picture comparisons of the old and new. Some things they did as well: darkened minor streets, changed the projection, added one-way arrows, added some major building landmarks, and changed the size of the images being sent.

Better yet, zoom out and then recenter the map to somewhere that was on the edge. The map keeps going! We can never run out of space! Man.. Google really is the most awesome company ever. They even made the damn globe bigger!